“I suppose,” I said slowly. “With help. But I was assuming you’d want to be involved.”
“The world belongs to humans now, Alex,” Arachne said. “The time for my kind is passing. You’ll be able to teach Karyos more than I can.”
“Honestly, I hadn’t thought beyond wondering if she was going to wake up and go right back to trying to kill us.”
“If your friends used the seed successfully, that should not happen. And from speaking to Luna and Anne, I believe they did.” Arachne looked at me. “So?”
I hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll try my best.”
“Thank you. Now, other matters. How are you progressing with the dreamstone?”
“Well, I’ve been working on communication range. I still have a few issues with really long distances, but it seems to be getting better. I can use it to talk to Anne pretty much anywhere now. I can probably manage it with Luna and Vari too.”
“What about the subject of our previous discussion?” Arachne said. “Creating more general messages, rather than to a specific receiver?”
“Oh, right,” I said. The example Arachne had given was that of a general call for attention or for help, aimed at anyone able to listen. “I practised a little with Anne.”
“You need to be able to use it for people other than Anne.”
“Fair enough.”
“Have you been practising Elsewhere combat?”
“It’s kind of difficult to find anyone to practise with,” I said. “About the only two I can ask apart from you are Luna and Anne. Luna can handle Elsewhere, but she doesn’t like it, and I know it’s asking a lot from her to get her to keep going back there. And Anne, well, she’s got her own reasons to avoid the place.”
“And you’ve done everything you can to persuade them otherwise?” Arachne said. “You’ve pressed on them the urgency of the situation? Or, if that doesn’t convince them, you’ve searched for other teachers?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “No.”
“When I first met you, you’d spent days at a time mastering some new application of your magic,” Arachne said. “Or on researching a new magical item. The Alex I knew back then would have worked day and night to learn everything there was to know about the dreamstone.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “But back then I was pretty much a hermit. About the only people I’d spend time with were you and Starbreeze. And Helikaon, I guess, but eventually I pretty much stopped seeing him as well. Nowadays I have to be a politician.”
“Is it really your position on the Council that’s the issue?”
“It does take up a lot of time.”
“But back then, when you did have free time, you tended to spend it on training and study. These days, it seems to me that far more of your time and attention goes towards people. One person in particular.”
I threw up my hands. “Okay, fine. Look, this is the first time I’ve been in a really long-term relationship, okay? It takes up more of my attention than I’d expected.”
Arachne tilted her head, studying me.
“You think it’s a bad thing?” I asked.
“No,” Arachne said after a moment’s consideration. “While you were more focused on your work back when we first met, you’re mentally far healthier now. But that won’t do you any good if your enemies decide to have you killed.”
“I know it sounds weird to say it, but I feel less threatened than I did a year ago,” I said. “This war is actually pretty good for me. Levistus and the rest of the Council are too busy dealing with Richard, and Richard is too busy dealing with the Council.”
“Your enemies won’t stay busy with each other for ever,” Arachne said. “But on to other matters. It’s time we discussed the final use of the dreamstone: using it to enter Elsewhere physically.”
I leant forward in interest. Arachne had brought this up before, but she’d warned me off experimenting. “How?”
“The how is simple,” Arachne said. “Channel through the dreamstone, using it as a focus, as if it were a gate stone. Now that you’ve bonded with it, it should be easy. But before you attempt it, you must understand exactly what it entails.”
I nodded.
“We talk about ‘going’ or ‘travelling’ to Elsewhere, but when you visit Elsewhere in dreams, what you are actually doing is projecting,” Arachne said. “Your body lies sleeping, while your mind forms an image. This is why you do not suffer physical consequences for anything that happens there. It’s not safe, obviously, but it’s very difficult for anything you meet in Elsewhere to harm you. Most people who die in Elsewhere do so due to their own mistakes.”
“Because they get lost, or send too much of themselves, yeah. So—”
Arachne cut me off with a gesture. “Listen, Alex. You have a tendency to jump ahead when you think you know what’s coming. You need to understand this clearly.”
I looked at Arachne in surprise. I wasn’t used to her speaking to me this sharply. “Okay.”
“As you’ve become more skilled with Elsewhere, you’ve ceased to fear it,” Arachne said. “If asked, you would probably say that it’s dangerous, but not more so than some parts of our own world. You would be very wrong. Elsewhere is an incredibly hostile environment. You can visit in dreams in relative safety because only your consciousness is projected. Elsewhere is an immaterial realm, and it is utterly inhospitable to physical matter. If you travel there physically, your material form will react with the environment in a process that erodes both. Since there is much more of Elsewhere than there is of you, this does not end well from your perspective.”
“So . . . you get disintegrated?”
“More like dissolved. Imagine a sugar lump dropped into the ocean.”
“How fast?”
“Inanimate objects dissolve almost instantly,” Arachne said. “For living creatures, it depends on their level of consciousness. A plant would be gone in a minute. A dog or cat might last a quarter of an hour. With a sapient creature such as a human, it depends on their sense of self and their facility with Elsewhere. A strong-willed and practised visitor could in theory survive for hours. But no matter how skilled or strong, the sugar lump is still a sugar lump, and the ocean is still the ocean.”
“Shields?”
“Do nothing. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that your sense of self is your shield. Anything you bring with you and hold close enough to your person has some limited protection. Clothes, jewellery, anything held in your hands. It doesn’t last though. Don’t take anything into Elsewhere unless you’re prepared to lose it.”
I sat thinking for a minute. “I see why you told me not to experiment.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ve got a question,” I said. “If Elsewhere is so horrendously lethal, what’s the point of going there?”
Arachne nodded. “Several reasons. First, the ability to gate to Elsewhere can be used as a travel technique. There are limitations, but in theory it gives you the ability to go almost anywhere. It’s also extremely hard to trace.”
“You’ve pretty much just described gating. Which every elemental mage can do already.”
“You’re not an elemental mage.”
I shrugged.
“There is more,” Arachne said. “When you travel to Elsewhere, since you are physically present, you are subject to the principles of Elsewhere just like everything else in that realm.”
“So the rules you taught me about combat in Elsewhere wouldn’t apply?” I said. “You can be hurt or killed?”
“Yes, though it’s more difficult. Your material form gives you some protection.”
“But basically, if someone else dreams themselves into Elsewhere and picks a fight with me, they’re invulnerable and I’m not.”
“Yes.”
“You’re making this sound worse and worse.”